Conventionally, the product related information, such as price, is attached to products like clothes with hanging tags made of e.g. paper or similar material. This information can be attached to the product at the place of manufacturing or it can be later added to the product. At least when local information, local price or updated price is to be attached to the product this has to be done manually in the store. The new prices are printed out on paper or a corresponding material, and these pieces with their new price markings are attached manually to existing tags on the products. Thus, an employee must first find the correct product where the tag has to be updated and the new tag is attached in its position. A disadvantage in this arrangement is, among other things, the fact that the arrangement is very laborious and there is a high risk of mistakes. In case of a mistake, a situation may occur, in which the price information on the price tags on the product conflicts with the price information in the cash register system.
Also electronic price label systems are known which offer automatic updating of prices to an electronic label that will facilitate and accelerate the updating of the price information to a significant extent. Electronic price label systems are systems used by retailers for displaying product pricing e.g. on shelves. Typically, electronic shelf labels are implemented as electronic display modules that are attached to the front edge of retail shelving. These modules use different technologies to show the current product price and also other information to the customer. A communication network allows the price display to be automatically updated whenever a product price is changed. This automated system reduces pricing management labor costs and improves pricing accuracy.
Electronic price label systems are particularly suitable for use in large shops or supermarkets that offer thousands or tens of thousands product items for sale, whose prices must be updated frequently and correctly.
The electronic price display modules can be updated from a centralized control system via wired or wireless communication. All-wired systems have obvious problems in terms of the layout limitations caused by complicated cabling due to the high number of individual electronic price label displays. Wireless systems have their major technological bottleneck in the need for individual power supplies for each electronic price label display unit and requirement for long power supply lifetime, i.e. operational lifetime for the batteries. In addition, the wireless systems need to be able to provide reliable communication channel in an environment that has high number of individual receiver-transmitter units that in order to prolong the battery life, need to operate with minimum transmitting power levels.
A display technology that is suitable for electronic price label applications is a so called Electronic Paper Display (EPD) that possesses a paper-like high contrast appearance, ultra-low power consumption, and a thin, light form. EPD's aim is to give the viewer the experience of reading from paper, while providing the capability to electronically update the displayed information. EPD's are technology enabled, as one possibility, by electronic ink. Such ink carries an electrical charge enabling it to be updated through electronics. Electronic ink is well suited for EPD's as it is a reflective technology which requires no front or backlight, is viewable under a wide range of lighting conditions, including direct sunlight, and requires no power to maintain an image. Electrical power is only consumed when the displayed data is changed. In order become widely applied in different type of applications, wireless electronic price labels or corresponding electronically controlled wireless displays are faced with a number of requirements that are partly dictated by the manufacturing process and partly by the end use, for example, the use, environment and manageability in a store by the store personnel.
WO0067110 discloses a display unit for electronic shelf price label system that utilizes electronic ink and EPD technology. The electronic display unit in WO0067110 features a printable electronic display comprising an encapsulated electrophoretic display medium. The resulting electronic display is flexible and has in large measure the applications of a printed display. Further, since the encapsulated electrophoretic display medium used in the present invention can be printed, the display itself can be made inexpensively. The encapsulated electrophoretic display medium is an optoelectronically active material which comprises at least two phases: an electrophoretic contrast media phase and a coating/binding phase. The electrophoretic display medium can form, for example, a full color, multi-color, or two color (e. g. black and white) display. The electrophoretic phase comprises at least one species of encapsulated electrophoretic particles, having distinct physical and electrical characteristics, dispersed in a clear or dyed suspending fluid. The coating/binding phase includes a polymer matrix that surrounds the electrophoretic phase. In this embodiment, the polymer in the polymeric binder is capable of being dried, cross linked, or otherwise cured as in traditional inks, and therefore a printing process can be used to deposit the encapsulated electrophoretic display medium onto a substrate.
Also radio-frequency based electronic article surveillance systems are known which are used to prevent shoplifting from retail stores, pilferage of books from libraries or removal of properties from office buildings. Special tags are fixed to products and these tags are removed or deactivated by the personnel of the store when the item is properly bought or checked out. At the exits of the store, a detection system sounds an alarm or otherwise alerts the staff when it senses active tags.
Also fitting areas, fitting rooms or dressing rooms are known in the prior art. They are usually e.g. small single-user cubicles where a person may try on clothes or in case of fitting areas, bigger areas where there are plurality of fitting rooms. These can often be found at retail stores where one would want to try on clothes before purchasing them.
With the solutions of the prior art fitting rooms don't have any automatic electronic article surveillance systems for preventing shop lifting. With the systems of prior art someone from the personnel of the store is needed to manually monitor how many articles are taken in to the fitting room by examining the person when he/se enters the fitting room area and leaves the fitting room area. Also someone is needed to monitor how many articles are left to the fitting room after the person has left the fitting room.